Markov as next Habs captain?

One of the biggest offseason questions for Canadiens fans is who will be the team’s next captain?

Columnist Jack Todd believes that Andrei Markov is a fine candidate to replace Brian Gionta, who is now with the Buffalo Sabres. Former Canadiens coach Jacques Demers also believes that Markov is the man to wear the C.

However, Todd doesn’t believe Markov wants the job.

Writes Todd: “Markov has come a long way from the shy guy who wouldn’t say nyet in either Russian or English when I first met him in Moscow in 1999. Back then, Markov was content to stand back and let his Moscow Dynamo teammates, Maxim Afinogenov and Nik Antropov, do all the talking. Since then, a very different Markov has emerged, a highly intelligent observer with a quick, dry wit and a sly grin. Which doesn’t mean that he wants to stand in the room and answer 79 mostly stupid questions from the media horde after every game. (‘Uh, Andrei, would you say the guys were giving it 110 per cent tonight or was it more like 109 per cent?’ ‘Uh, Andrei, how great was Carey Price tonight?’)”

Todd adds: “Don’t get me wrong: I agree with Demers. In the room and on the ice, Markov might be the best choice to replace Brian Gionta as captain. He has the talent, the respect, the calm demeanor, the experience and that mysterious quality of leadership the position demands.”Markov would be (with his buddy, Alex Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals) one of only two Russian captains in the NHL. I just think he’s too smart to take the job.”If the C doesn’t go to Markov, then where does it go?

Todd suggests there are several other good candidates on the Habs roster, including Brandon Prust, P.K. Subban, Tomas Plekanec and Brendan Gallagher.

494 Comments

If someone should wear the “C”, it should be Markov. But if he doesn’t want it and would like to remain an Alternate captain, so be it. I think we should go with 3 Alternates this season until there is a clear winner for the job. I would hate to see a core player (For EXAMPLE: MaxPac, because he’s the best option for now….) given the “C” only to see it taken away next year for lets say PK when he’s ready for it….. I think that might just create tension between players no?? Pleks was mentioned a few times, but I don’t think he is Captain material. A Captain has to be pretty vocal amongst many other things, and I just don’t see that in Pleks. I think PK could be a great Captain one day, but right now, there is already so much pressure on him, and many distractions surrounding him, that he should take this year to focus on his game. We need him to be an elite defenceman right now more then we need him as a Captain. We should leave PK alone and see how he naturally progresses as a leader on the ice. Time will tell when he’s ready for the job.
Thoughts?

For those looking to buy EA’s latest installment of it’s NHL games, you might want to know that the PS3 and Xbox360 versions are bare updates on the last games, and all the bells and whistle are only for the newer consoles.

There is no excuse for what Bertuzzi did to Moore. It was chicken-spit top-to-bottom. But I maintain to this day that the NHL and its disciplinary committee (or lack thereof at the time) really dropped the ball when it came to how Moore’s hit on Naslund was dealt with. By today’s standards it would have resulted in Moore being suspended for several games, and I think that would have been enough to diffuse the situation. The reason the ‘Nucks went after Moore so hard was because Moore received no penalty of any kind for what was obviously a hit to the head on a vulnerable player – Vancouver’s Captain and team MVP no less.

I don’t recall exactly how that went down, but I think he declined until challenged by Matt Cooke, or someone he thought he could take.

Regardless of “the code”, if the NHL had policed itself better then, they would not likely be in this situation now. In fact, the Moore incident is/was probably one of the catalysts for how they deal with head-shots currently.

Agree. I made much the same point about Zdeno Chara getting away scot-free with his attempted beheading of Max. If Daddy Campbell hadn’t been involved, if Gary Bettman hadn’t been “extremely comfortable” with the decision to not sanction the Bruins’ ape, Montréal fans would have felt a sense of some justice and relented on him. He’s now sentenced to being relentlessly booed every time he’s near the puck at the New Forum.

He probably would have been booed anyway (just for being a Bruin), but I concur that Chara getting away with nothing on that one was a bad decision. He should have had at least a token suspension given the dangerous/reckless nature of the hit, especially in light of the injury that Pacioretty incurred.

Timo if you are still on. I have used http://www.hockeystreams.com for 5-6 years and the HD is good on my large screen. Its the best value by far with anything that I know. And I like that they archive every game. I watch it in the morning when I get up (from our time zone in Europe its just too late to watch, by the time the live game is over the birds are beginning to sing).

I’m kind of disappointed in this. Steve Moore consistently said he was not interested in a settlement, that it wasn’t about money, that he wanted the truth to come out. Yet here is a settlement that includes a non-disclosure agreement, so we’ll never get to hear the truth he was so keen on.

I hear you Normand, I was in the same camp as you. I really do wonder if Bettman and others close to the game got involved behind the scenes, and made the offer to settle so financially beneficial Moore would have been crazy to say no.

Had this case gone to trial I think a great deal of harm to the old boys club at the ownership/mgmt level would have been done.

Agree with all of you. It’s just more of the same, all those shysters who crow that they can’t wait for their day in court, then cop a plea deal and hide behind that, Steve Moore kind of lumps himself in with those guys.

TVA nationally has the opener vs Toronto on Wed Oct. 8th, 21 Saturday night games and the playoffs. Note that all the TVA games are also available nationally in English as per the Rogers group coverage listed above.

RDS regionally has 60 Habs games:
9 Pre-season
1 Saturday afternoon (Jan 31 1:00 PM vs WAS)
59 on Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs and Fri.
The opener on Wed Oct. 8th is only on SN and TVA. All other Su,M,T,W,T,F games are on RDS.
Note that Wed Mar 4th at Anaheim and Sun Apr 5th at Florida are on RDS only (and not on any of the Rogers group).

One of the things I’m looking forward to this season is monitoring the progress that the Bulldogs make. They have been poorly stocked with talent for a while now, but the young-blood coming in seems pretty high caliber with a good mix of skill sets:

– pure offensive talents like Hudon, Andrighetto, Holland and Thomas;
– lots of two-way guys like Gregoire, Carr, Thrower, Dietz, Dumont and De La Rose (maybe?); and
– a fair amount of grit/nastiness in guys like Nevins, Fournier, and Crisp

There are some traveled vets in there to provide leadership and regardless of what MTL does, they should have average to better than average goaltending.

Winning breeds winning, and I can’t help but think Hamilton will be better this year with the influx of youth. Which is good for the development of all farmhands.

The bulldogs should be interesting. They def have a lot of new faces coming and they are needed. The dogs team hasn’t been very good for a few years now and without Toker last year they would have been much much worse.

I had actually forgot about Hudon heading to the dogs this year. They should have some offensive punch but there will be a learning curve. I don’t know if I would list Holland as an offensive guy. He is a solid defensive player but I don’t think he will ever make the jump to the big squad.

I really hope that like you say this infusion of youth helps them get better.

Ryan Malone reportedly pleaded no contest to his DUI and entering a diversion program for his cocaine possession charge. I thought he’d been baffled as to how the coke ended up in his back pocket, but he didn’t want to get into a big snit about it I guess.

I like Prust, but I do not seeing being the Captain. How would he compare to other team Captains? Will he be healthy next year? Will he be resigned after the next two seasons? Are his shoulders finished?

I am in the “give PK the C camp”. Have been for sometime. There is only one other option to me: Markov.

Markov gets the C, then Subban once he leaves/retires. This is the only possible way I see it going besides just giving it to Subban.

I know Plekanec is also being discussed and is a possibility. One of concerns is how much longer will he be here? Will he be resigned? Traded?

All the chatter of who is captain seems a bit irrelevant to me anyway. No matter who wears the C, this is Price’s team now IMO.

Making the best of my last couple of weeks of vaycay by brewing yet again! This time it’s a porter, called ‘Le Faubourg à M’lasse’.

For those interested in history, that was the old working-class district of Montreal, between Hochelaga (where I live) and the Quartier Latin, stretching down to the port. It was originally called Le Faubourg du Québec, being the easternmost section of Montreal on the Québec City road, but its name changed to reflect the presence of the many sugar refineries (producing, amongst other things, molasses) in the area. These factories were perfectly positioned to collect the Carribbean sugar delivered at the port. One factory (Lantic) still exists, although much further east.

The poor Faubourg à M’lasse disappeared thanks to Mayor Jean Drapeau’s dislike of working-class areas (which he mistakenly called ‘slums’), and the heart of the district was razed to make room for the CBC building and its wonderful surrounding parking-lot.

Hope my first attempt at a porter goes well, and I’ll probably add some molasses to the brew to give it that little touch of authenticity!

Just curious what kind of set up you have? I’ve always been curious about brewing my own but not too sure if I’d have the space to do it. Is this just done in your garage? Would it be too messy/smelly to do this in a basement?

The problem with doing this indoors is that the standard batch amount is 18-20 litres (5 gallons), and in order to get that to boil, you either need a high-end electric kettle setup (which can be very expensive), or use a propane burner (like for corn on the cob) like I do. That needs to be done outside, in a garage with ventilation, or in a basement with a full-on extractor fan and a CO2 detector.

Some people brew on their balconies, and I brew on my deck.

As for a mash-tun, I use a 42-L cooler with a ball-cock spigot and copper drain manifold that I made myself (all instructions on how to do this are online, and I’m by no means very handy with this sort of stuff). If you’re planning on brewing from extract, then you don’t need one of these.

The only other thing you’d need is a wort-chiller, which you can make (as I did) with some soft copper piping and other bits and bobs from Home Depot.

Thanks for the writeup Matty, and glad you’re having success with the homebrew.

For me, homebrewed beer has always been synonymous with very, very bad beer, basically undrinkable. I went to a couple of stags in the nineties where we all chipped in for the campground, jetboat, party supplies, entertainment, and a huge amount of homebrewed beer that was absolutely awful. One batch had a bunch of sugar at the bottom of every plastic bottle, there was a reason why, apparently. I’d played it safe and brunged my own, so no harm done, but I’ve steered clear from that ever since.

I’m told that the technology/recipes/methods have greatly improved since then, that I should try it, and to hear all the success stories is almost convincing, but I’m gunshy.

Heh heh. I can understand why!
Who would bottle beer in plastic?!?! Shocking.
And the sugar at the bottom was supposed to be for priming (aka carbonating the beer). Remaining yeasts in the bottle eat the sugar, give a touch more alcohol, and release CO2, which goes into suspension as bubbles.

I also remember homebrew being pretty bad – my dad brewed his own in the late 80s, early 90s, and although I was young, I remember it being pretty dreadful.

It’s come leaps and bounds, and I honestly can’t believe how good the stuff I’ve made is. I have no experience, but have read a bit about it, and gave it a whirl, and people have told me that they would easily drink pints of what I’ve produced at a pub.

I’m not even bragging, just expressing my astonishment!

The only proviso, however, is that you have to be clean and pay attention to detail (water temperatures, etc.), as it’s more like baking than cooking.

I’m hoping to bring a couple of brews along to the summit to share around.

My schadenfreude in all this is that he’s illico presto serving his penance, by getting drafted by the Browns. You just know that’s the last place he wanted to go, along with Buffalo.

It could only have been better if he’d been taken by the Raiders, and dragged down that entire franchise with him, like a drunk gripping at the tablecloth as he trips over his own feet. Or Jerry Jones’ Cowboys, almost as succulent a scenario.

Looks more and more like XBMC is the way to go… I’ll have to figure out how I can hook it up to my antiquated TV with limited number of inputs though but still… a big FU to rogers and the NHL (and the Habs) is always good.

I would love to go this direction. The only question I have is can I record the games? Typically I get home from work 40 minutes after the game starts. I pvr all the games and start watching part way through the action. If this device can accommodate that, I’m all over it.

As far as recording games I think the only way to do that is with Hockey streams as you can watch the game after if it over whenever you want.
I am not sure of anyway to actually record on XBMC. I will ask though

I believe MythTV should allow you to have access to PVR backend server and schedule recordings. I need to do some more digging. I think one problem with XBMC if you wanted to schedule to record the game is knowing where to find the stream in advance.

Couldn’t agree more amigo. And the Damn beer companies and government tax on booze.. Anywhere from $6 to $9 for a pint at the Saloons! And the waitresses keep their clothes on! What the hell happened? 10 bucks for a pack of smokes too, unless you want to smoke that Mohawk skunk.

Since RDS is no longer and option in the West (SK) any longer I am wondering if someone can tell me how I can watch all of the habs games out here? This may have been answered before but it is still unclear what I would need to do? Any guidance would be apreciated as last year it was was CBC, RDS and TSN.

hockeystreams.com will have all Habs games for just over $100 for calendar year. I heard however that your are unlikely to get cable HD quality even if they claim games are on HD. Could look good on a laptop screen though.

Someone mentioned XBMC and it seems like a good option too.

I am still looking into hacking a bell satelite dish to get RDS feed from quebec… waiting on a local tech to investigate that for me.

A less attractive option is to subscribe to sportsnet, city TV, TSN, TVA sports AND Center Ice and you may get almost (but not all) games.

I think $109 if I recall. And whether it is legal or illegal is the least of my concerns. Like shiram said, legally I cannot get all 82 games even if I subscribe to everything thing I need including Center Ice at double the cost.

He did not play the AHL since 97-98!
But he did not look great in the NHL.
He played for Kladno last season, and had decent numbers, but I doubt he gets more than League minimum, or a training camp invite.

Agree, but I don’t think MB was able to sign Kristo unless given the promise of trade to a team he wanted to go to.

Speculation on my part, but I think he signed with Habs to get paid for end of AHL season, also helps burn 1 year of ELC and gets him sooner to a bigger payday. Granted he needs to make an NHL club on his merits for this to occur. But he did put up goals in the AHL last year.

I don’t doubt that Kristo is a better player than Thomas, I just think it was a case of a Thomas type player or no Kristo at all.

I’m not convinced Burly. That next contract he got to sooner is smaller than his ELC. His AHL salary is now $65,000 and his NHL (if / when he gets there) is $826,875. No more bonuses. I think it may simply be a case of Montreal signing him and then not being too impressed with what they saw so they got what they could for him. Of course that is also speculation.

Good points B, just didn’t like the whole way the thing went down. He was one of our few prospects that had “goalscorer” written on him. Something we need, I liked the trade to acquire Vanek, but that cost us another of our only “goalscorer” prospects in Collberg.

We really need A Hudon or DelaRose player to pan out. Perhaps Sekac answers the bell also.

You can take NCAA production with a grain of salt. Ryan Duncan was a more prolific scorer for the University of North Dakota than Kristo and even won the Hobey Baker, yet he never even got a sniff at the NHL. Heck, Aaron Palushaj played 2 seasons in the NCAA and was more productive than Kristo during his comparable 1st 2 NCAA seasons. Palushaj has struggled to produce and stick in the NHL. It also works the other way, some guys had lesser NCAA results yet went on to solid NHL careers. Perhaps Kristo’s tires were over pumped by many of the commentariat?

I like to follow The Score Sports Forecaster, Essential Hockey Yearbook. In the 20012-13 issue they had Kevin Hayes as a “long term project” in the top 10 bios under team depth. For the 2013-14 issue, they did not list him. In the 2011-12 issue, he was also listed as long term project. Some players develop later so it may be a moot point. I will be curious to see where he ranks this time around, if they mention him due to becoming a UFA.

His best year was last year in College, was considered his breakout year. Some think he will be a stud, while others wonder if his season was due to his age and linemates. Big forward with skill, but has a bit of a rep. for not playing as big as his size.

Thanks for sharing. He is 100% right. These celebrities think that them posting a video is their contribution. They need to start putting their money where their mouths are considering they make stupid money. More than the majority people who are donating.

This goes for PK Subban, Kobe Bryant, Crosby etc athletes who are making huge cash

I wouldn’t assume however that players like PK aren’t contributing some money. I would think/hope they are making a contribution and in so doing I think are dignified enough not to brag about their donations.

I am sure some people are just doing the bucket toss and posting, but given just how much the donations are up, somebody is donating money. I just think it is a slippery slope to start accusing them of not donating if we don’t know.

I figured it would be announced by noon. I did read a post that said he was going to speak with the teams yesterday that he had short listed. Like you, I was hoping to see something when I logged in this morning.

I do think at this point there could be room for him on the Habs. right now Gallagher, Parenteau and Weise are in and Bourque could play on the right side where he seems to be more comfortable scoring from. Sure Sherbak or another prospect may surprise, but I would not bank on it. At the very least, having Hayes would soften the blow if McCarron does not pan out to be more than a 3rd or 4th line player.

The thing (a thing?) about this article is that it doesn’t mention Sekac at all.
It refers to a 3rd line open spot waiting for him. There isn’t. There’s a third line spot available for competition, with a newly signed free agent who would appear to have the fast track to it.

I don’t think he would be almost definitely be penciled in on a line as the writer states.

As an aside: “Almost definitely” ugh, C’mon you Dreger clone. Chose better words or take a stand.

And interesting developments in the Bertuzzi vs Moore upcoming court battle. Appears the sides are talking settlement, wonder if Bettman is ponying up any money to help this be a settlement, a decision against Bertuzzi/NHL in court would be a bad thing for the league.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Bettman is behind the effort to do something to make this go away. Bertuzzi’s lucky I wasn’t in charge of the league. So are Crawford and the Canucks.
I believe I would have rained fire and brimstone upon them for this.

Wow, I really believe Steve Moore when he says he wants this to go to trial, that he doesn’t want a settlement, that he wants to put these guys on the stand. I’d be surprised if he accepted the settlement, unless it included an agreement as to the statement of facts that vindicated him somehow.

I’m reading “Game Misconduct” by Russ Conway right now, and the NHL’s modus operandi is always to deny, stall, frustrate its former players, and force them to accept a smaller settlement or face endless legal bills and risk going bankrupt. I thought Steve Moore could hold out against that strategy, coming from a relatively well-off family, and is more interested in seeing all the baffle-gabbers squirm under oath.

The sun was shining in the middle of the night,
When two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back, they faced each other.
Drew their swords and shot each other.
The deaf policeman heard the noise and
went running to save the two dead boys.
If you do not believe my tale is true, just
ask the blind man: he saw it, too.

Yes, I wondered why Armstrong was in the photo. Then I thought, players from other teams do train together during the off season.
Even Prust looks small. If that is from two seasons back, Eller should be even stronger now!

Odd top 5 questions I must say, it is guaranteed that Bernier is their number 1 goalie, the number one question facing the Leafs is will Carlyle stop coaching like a 1960’s hockey coach, will he play a fourth line which plays hockey, will they allow Gardiner and Rielly to take the reins of the offence from defence thus limiting the minutes of Pylon Phaneuf and will Kadri ever be trusted by the coach to become a bonafide scoring threat on that team.

A number of posters on here west of Belleville suggesting that purchasing NHL Centre Ice will be a good way to stick it to Rogers while being able to get access to all Hab games… NOT TRUE.

Rogers purchased all rights on all platforms, INCLUDING Centre Ice packages. That was part of the $50 billion headed into NHL coffers. Check out the terms of service on NHL.com; every single penny that you spend on Centre Ice will go to Rogers. That’s why Rogers is limiting the number of games available on broadcast TV; instead of raising their own cable rates and looking like the bad guys, they’re hoping that you’ll buy Centre Ice at grossly-inflated rates.

We can sign as many petitions as we want (and I still encourage you to do so) but the most effective way to hit Rogers in the bank account is to NOT purchase Centre Ice.

Exactly. It’s almost as if they spent all this money and now realize just how hard it will be to get it back. $433.33mil a year to show the games. Rogers sold the french rights for $120 mil/yr, leaving them to raise $313mil/yr, leaving out production costs for all platforms. Rogers should have a target of doubling that amount, meaning that would make it about $626mil/yr as a target. Let’s say there are 5 million hard core fans out there, willing to spend the bucks to have the games on their tvs, laptops and phones. That’s roughly $125 each for that 5 million.
Trouble is, I don’t think there are more than about 2 million fans who want to pay extra to watch their team’s full schedule of games.
Buying Center Ice packages in Canada with all the local blackouts is foolhardy unless you’re a fan of an American team.
I believe Rogers overpaid by a large amount. This contract may prove to be an albatross for them. What a shame. Rogers is about to find out how stingy Canadians are.

Money makes the world go round, eh? I bitched (can I say that) and moaned the last several season as the (US) Center Ice Package subjected me to the visiting teams broadcast. I guess I should be grateful, eh Cal?

Also, the biggest market in all of Canada (Toronto) has released the schedule and essentially all games are available in the Toronto region for all 82 games, that fanbase won’t care about any other teams.

huh.
All 82 habs games are available in the montreal region!
I don’t understand your point.
In toronto if you want to want to watch all the leaf games you need to subscribe to city, sportsnet, tsn, and leafs tv to get all the games. Again, i don’t understand teh point you are making.

My point is in relation to how Rogers gets more money, specifically out of selling Center Ice package in the largest TV market in Canada.

Most people have TSN/Sportsnet in their cable packages (i do) and therefore don’t need to purchase anything different this upcoming season to get all Leaf games. In the past there were games on Leaf TV which required a special purchase.

there is no change to Center Ice from what it has been under the old tv agreement.
You get out of market games. YOu don’t get games from your local market or nationally broadcasted games.
I don’t get your point about local blackouts. This is how it always has been. Center Ice is there so you can watch the teams that aren’t in your local market.
IE if you are a habs fan, who doesnt live in the montreal local region, you will get all habs games that aren’t broadcasted nationally on sportsnet cbc and city.(around 50 games i believe) You also get to watch all the other teams that aren’t in your local tv region that aren’t being shown nationally.
It is far from a rip off.

By blacking out national games, it forces fans to also pay for cable. Considering how expensive the Game Centre package is, I think it is a bit of a rip off to not include all games. I am sure there would be consumers who would opt out of cable if they could get all their games on Game Centre..

Last year I paid the equivalent of $0.60 per game to watch all regular season games on RDS. ($7/month for seven months). This season, 33 games are being broadcast which means that a subscription to Centre Ice (it’s offered to me only as part of a “Super Sports Pak” bundle) gets me the other 49 Hab games… for $287.

Even after I subtract what it cost me last season to have RDS, (I’ve dropped the subscription) I’m still looking at a $238 increase to get all 82 games… a 485% cost increase over last season.

Would you be happy if the product that you consumed last season cost you 485% more this season? Would you not call that an opportunistic rip-off?

RDS had been making money off of broadcasting all Hab games nationally, and Rogers could have picked up where RDS had left off. Instead, they came up with a plan to move the majority of the games to Centre Ice just so that they could squeeze as much money as they could out of Canadian hockey fans.

If you want to stick it to Rogers and not add money to their coffers… hook up an inexpensive PC to your tv, download and install XBMC and add the Sportdevil video add-on… whenever the Habs weren’t on CBC in SOuthern Ontario.. I just fired this up and watched.

One caveat is that depending on the feed, quality might be affected but in most cases I was able to find it in HD.

Perhaps not for the the technologically challenged – but if you have any ability around a computer or a buddy who does, it works quite well.

Just want to say how much I enjoy this site.Otherwise I wouldn’t come here as often as I do.However it does have its quirks.Notably this bugaboo about using a certain word.Seems rather silly to me.Or am I just being picky?Nah, that’s not the kind of person I am.

The reason Bergevin is resigning Frankie Bouillon is to bring him back as team captain for a year to give them one more year to figure out who the captain is.
Frankie is respected in the room and by the coach and can easily deal with the media. He also fits the size requirement of past captains Gionta and Koivu.

Whoever turns out to be the Captain, I think that we will be OK.
Remember the recent dark days as a Habs fan?
Can’t be worse than having Kaberle as one of our top four.
Here he muses about making an NHL comeback: